Mine's in my bedroom, and I hear my Tivos, but don't hear the stream at all.. and when I first read this thread, I listened to my friend's Stream up close and though -- wow that's loud.. but in real situations, I don't hear it.

Mine's in my laundry room with the Ethernet equipment so the noise isn't a distraction in my case, but yeah it would be annoying anywhere else!

Wish they'd have worked harder on a fan-less solution. In my case I'm not as worried about noise as I am the damage that will happen to the Streams that are tucked away out of sight that will clog up with lint and then overheat and fail. Anything that's moving that much air through it for cooling through little tiny holes is bound to collect enough lint to eventually plug up and fail......and because they're noisy, many will get tucked away and hidden in places where a lint build-up won't be observed and brushed away....

If you're worried about *lint* clogging up Streams, isn't the laundry room the wrong place to put one? Or perhaps you simply plan to inspect it frequently for lint from the dryer. Admittedly the laundry room is probably a good place for masking the noise from a Stream.

My stream is also loud as heck. Way way too loud. Sounds like something is wrong with it.

It makes it hard to hear the TV. It's incredibly annoying.

It's also totally random. It will be 100% quiet for days and then the fans spin up and it fills the whole room with an annoying whiny rattle of cheap electronics fan. And what's weird is that the fans spin up at completely random times. It will be silent for a week and then suddenly, for no reason whatsoever, spin up. Why if I haven't streamed anything in 2 days is it fairly warm to the touch and sounds like a toy car or something? Ridiculous.

My stream is also loud as heck. Way way too loud. Sounds like something is wrong with it.

It makes it hard to hear the TV. It's incredibly annoying.

It's also totally random. It will be 100% quiet for days and then the fans spin up and it fills the whole room with an annoying whiny rattle of cheap electronics fan. And what's weird is that the fans spin up at completely random times. It will be silent for a week and then suddenly, for no reason whatsoever, spin up. Why if I haven't streamed anything in 2 days is it fairly warm to the touch and sounds like a toy car or something? Ridiculous.

Mine spins up randomly too, and it's loud, but it's not that loud. It's loud enough to hear in a quite room, but a TV a normal volume would easily drown it out. Sounds like something is wrong with the fan in yours. You may want to consider exchanging it if you still can as that could be a sign of imminent failure.